The Rapid Case Ascertainment program (RCA) was developed in 1986-1987 to facilitate population-based studies of cancer that propose to use the state of Connecticut as a population laboratory. It was incorporated as a YCC shared resourced on 1/1/95. RCA functions as a field arm of the Connecticut Tumor Registry, the oldest population-based cancer registry in the country, and since 1973 an NCI SEER site. RCA takes care of the many requirements and administrative tasks common to all proposed hospital- based research in the state, and provides uniformly high-quality interface with those individuals, institutions and agencies who are crucial to the success of population-based cancer prevention and control research. Initiation of hospital-based research in Connecticut is complicated. Individual hospital requirements and personnel are always changing. Prior to RCA, an investigator who had a single study a definitive funding period and perhaps limited knowledge of institutional policies, personalities and politics had to spend an inordinate amount of time on non-scientific related effort to obtain and maintain the necessary approvals to conduct the research. Major services provided to investigators are: consulting and assisting in protocol writing in appropriate areas (protection of human subjects, confidentiality, design of required institution-specific consent documents, etc.); obtaining all non-Yale approvals to conduct the research (State of CT, CT Hospital Association., all community hospital IRBs, hospital administrative and departmental approvals, where necessary); providing names of patients with incident cancers by surveying all hospitals, and when appropriate specific private laboratories, on a regular basis; providing timely status reports and requests for reapprovals to all non-Yale IRBs. RCA services geared to enhance and strengthen the partnership of investigators and data sources are: providing feed-back of all published results of research to involved personnel in participating institutions to counter a past compliant that they never saw the results of research conducted with data they provided; recognizing and acknowledging in print those institutions which participate in the research; and acting as a resource to the health care community in those areas relating to cancer prevention and control, including facilitating interaction between investigators with common interests and goals.